


Marked Silver

by zhovel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Klance is implied, M/M, VLD Halloween Exchange 2017, Vampire Lance, but galra means something else in here, fairytale AU, i don't understand the universe and i made it up myself, it's currently a quarter beta-ed so i'll change stuff later??, its confusing, keith's galra, oh yeah also lots of time skips, the summary is a little misleading btw it's not a memory loss au or childhood friends to lovers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 21:26:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12639498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhovel/pseuds/zhovel
Summary: In their world, children born with magic are separated after they become of age. Keith loses his childhood best friend because of this.He remembers Lance. Lance doesn't remember him.





	Marked Silver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ssuppositiouss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssuppositiouss/gifts).



“Today’s the Festival,” Lance says. “How do you feel?”

Keith’s eyes flicker down to Lance’s ankle, then to his own. Their matching marks seem more ominous by the second. “The Festival,” he echoes. An answer to another question, one never asked.

The Festival comes every few moons. Its official purpose is to be a celebration for their escape from Earth, but everyone knows it exists to divide child Mavtiks up.

Mavtiks are people who bear the silver mark on their ankle from birth, branding them as those with magic. There are different kinds of Mavtiks, and those newly of-age are sorted into clans at the Festival. Mavtiks can’t mix after their powers have grown, because halfings, more commonly called the Galra, are dangerous.

It is rare for Mavtik children to play with others of their kind like Keith and Lance do, because different clans usually have personalities that clash. The fact that it is too likely the friendship will be ripped apart like a gaping wound at the Ceremony doesn’t help either.

Keith doesn’t want to lose Lance. He can’t imagine a life without him.

He bites down hard on his lip.

Maybe his emotions are too transparent for his own good, or maybe Lance knows him too well, because the boy asks the very question he doesn't want to answer. “Tomorrow- are you scared?”  

Keith lets the words hang in the air for a second. He tries to memorize the familiar way they stand with their shoulders a measured distance apart, something they had done since they were small.

“I'm not,” Keith lies without blinking, lets the words tumble out because anything, _anything_ would be better than saying the first thought in his head. _Don’t leave me._

His eyes suddenly sting. Keith bops his finger against Lance’s nose, their language for _love you_ . They don’t say _love_ anymore.

Lance gives him a nudge, smiling back, pleased. He gets the message.

“The sun’s in fifth. We gotta go,” he says. He sounds reluctant to break their little bubble.

They start off. The fading light of the day casts their silhouettes into darkness at their feet.

Two boys, gangly and awkward, hands in each other’s back pockets. They walk towards the noise of the main village, apprehension chasing after them as if the jitteriness shooting through Keith’s body wasn't enough.

 

 

-

 

 

“Does it hurt?” Shiro asks, running a hand across the splotches across Keith’s arms. Bruises. Yellowed, faded; some of them purple and glaringly angry. Marks of their training. Shiro shared them.

“A little.”

They sit closer than they should, basking in the comfort of the familiarity of a friend. It's not often that Shiro gets a break from being a slave. His punishment, for failing his task.

Keith doesn’t want to fail his. His mentor had put him here for a reason. A reminder: he cannot fail like Shiro did.

“Remember what I asked of you. Are you doing it? Will you be alright?.” Shiro always has the worst timing.

Keith jerks back, a sharp, bitter movement that makes Shiro shrink away. “I will be,” he says, stiff. “For the mission.”

He would die for Shiro in a heartbeat. He lost his best friend, long ago; he doesn’t want to lose another. But punishment was worse, in a way; he doesn’t want to choose.

He stands up, clasping the cuffs back onto Shiro’s wrists. “Stand up, slave.”

Their conversation is over.

 

 

-

 

 

“The sorting at the Festival is always a mess." Lance mutters under his breath. He holds Keith's hand, palm sweaty. Keith doesn't push him away like he normally does.

Keith doesn't like crowds because they shove and push until he can't breathe. "I know."

The crowd moves in front of them, a long line they follow. Children of every race share the same expression. Fear.

No one wants to be here.

"Gunderson, Pidge." The announcer wears boredom on his face, voice crackling through a white handheld microphone.

The boy in question walks to the middle of the crowd. His life is going to change in the next minute.

With a sharp inhale, he rips off the bandage around his ankle.

"Alternate Universe." Another name ticked off a list that seemed to never end.

The crowd _oohs_ for a moment. Mavtiks that turn out to be alternate universe characters are rare. A single moment of fame, then Gunderson is swept off into the waiting arms of his clan leader.

"McClain, Lance." The crowd jostles around him once again, but Keith doesn't notice anymore. He can almost taste bile from the back of his throat, his heart leaping out of his chest.

"Please," he mutters. He doesn't know what he's praying for, or who he’s praying to.

Lance squeezes his hand before pulling away. He looks smaller than usual when he shuffles to the announcer, shoulders hunched.

_Good luck_ , Keith mouths. Lance doesn’t see it. He exchanges a few sentences with the announcer. Then, without hesitating, he bends down and pulls up the bottoms of his jeans in one swift motion.

"Vampire!"

Keith sees Lance grin. For the first time, he notices the glint of Lance's sharp teeth digging into his lips. Fangs, he corrects himself.

He wonders why he's surprised.

He shifts his weight uncomfortably as he watches Lance walk away, waiting as people are herded off like sheep. He isn’t the most patient person out there.

And finally-

"Kogane, Keith!"

Keith hurries to his place. Everything feels sort of blurry. He's glad he practiced the few steps to the center with Lance a few days ago, because he feels like he could trip over his own feet right now.

"Mark, please." The man's voice is harsh. Keith wonders why he's in such a bad mood all the time.

He unties the strip of cloth he had tied around the mark, letting it flutter to the ground to reveal a silver cross.

"You're-" For the first time, the announcer seems speechless. "Keith Kogane, Galra.

His world stops. A single thought remains in his head.

_Don’t leave_.

He raises his head, meets the eyes of a stranger. A girl slightly older than him, her hair scraped into a tight bun that makes her eyes pop.

They were hazel, he thinks. Later, he’ll realize that she used to sit next to him in school.

 

 

-

 

 

A bang.

A yell.

They're flung backwards, Keith shielding himself from the explosion by pure instinct. _She's strong_ , he thinks, smiling grimly. But he’s stronger.

The shock runs through his body as he hits the ground hard. She's trembling, he can feel it  through his hold on her. He doesn't sheath his knife after he gets up though, doesn't let his past take over this time. Nothing can distract him.

_Mission first_ , always.

He swore an oath. He grips her by the neck like the harsh movement would make him remember his promise better, dunking her face-first into the river they landed next to.

"Please," she chokes out, scrabbling at his firm hold with clumsy fingers, gasping for air. "Please, Keith."

_Keith._

He stops. He had left that part of him behind. It had died with his best friend.

No one should know. Why does she?

"We need to talk." He growls. It isn’t part of the plan, but he can sacrifice some time.

He concentrates on the forest around them. _Privacy,_ he wills. The trees still, as if someone had shaped them into a sound barrier, until no part of their conversation could be overheard.

He rips vines off nearby plants and ties them too-tight around her hands. She has no way of escaping without him catching up. Her lips are tinted blue with cold, he notes as he brushes hair away from her face.

"Speak."

"I'm a Caretaker." she admits after she catches her breath. Keith can feel her watching his every move.

Bitterness bubbles up in him at the very word. Caretakers have taken everything from him.

They are assigned to mavtik children at birth, meant to protect. Keith's mavtik died when he was months old. Lance's caretaker took him in, raised the two children together even though everyone tried to talk him out of it. He’s the only good caretaker Keith knows.

Caretakers are the ones to force Lance away from him, screaming and kicking, when Keith had tried to cling onto him after the Ceremony. They are the people who huddled in groups after they revealed that he’s Galra and decided that they weren't going to give him a place in the City.

His mentor raised him in their place. Keith owes him everything.

_Mission._

He shrugs off the thought. His mentor can wait, he can be selfish for one more time.

He hisses at the woman, ears twitching back, flat on the sides of his head. "You."

She swallows. She opens her mouth then closes it, as if words had gotten stuck on the way up and she couldn't find them.

Keith snaps, impatient. "What?" He digs the blunt of the knife in her side, reminding her of their power imbalance.

"I’m Lance's new Caretaker, after his Ceremony. And I know about you" She pauses. "Lance wouldn't want you to."

Keith recoils as if she had punched him in the ribs. In a way, it felt like he had. Years of training stripped away at the name, until all that was left was a small boy without his best friend, dirty and hungry, trying to track a person that was already swept away by his new Caretaker.

“He thought I was better than that,” he says. His voice is weary once his guard slips, past roughness smoothed like a rock that has been bashed against pebbles for too-long. “He always did. And it's too late. You know what I’m here to do.”

“And you know what Lance would say if he was here with you.”

Keith doesn't answer. He is tired, exhausted, and everything that happened seems to crash down like a wave over his head.

“Let me go, Keith,” she tries. It is a low blow, they both know. "Lance wants this."

Lance.

Voices crowd around Keith’s head, years of people from back and back and back who had been through his experiments sharing a tiny space, the only time they could have spoken out since they were trapped. Their punishment.

_Let her go-_

_Don’t-_

_Mission-_

_Lance-_

_Loyalty-_

_Zar-_

_Lance-_

_Lance-_

And he breaks. Water rushes through the crack in his dam, the sheer weight and pressure making his head pound.

“NO.”

Allura breaks out of her bonds and runs, right before he spaces out, water puddling at his feet.

 

 

-

 

 

Keith doesn’t know where home is anymore. He has no place to go, not when he’s on the run from the Head Caretakers after breaking out from his imprisonment. His feet ache from walking.

He needs to find the House of Vampires. Lance will know what to do, he’s sure.

He stops a nice-looking lady pushing a stroller. "Sorry, miss, I-"

She disappears when he blinks.

He tries again, running in front of a passerby with shaved hair. "Excuse me, Sir."

No one notices Keith.

He finds the house, finally, right before morning breaks. He spots Lance relaxing in a huge blow-up pool.

There's a hole nearby in the painted wooden gate that he thinks he might be a little too big for, but he slips through the crack without a single splinter. "Lance!"

The boy sits up, raises his head. "Who are you?"

His eyes glint red. Keith turns around and runs.

He doesn't know where to go anymore, so he falls asleep in a dark alley, huddling close to the walls for warmth.

 

Keith wakes up with his stomach piercing with hunger.

Footsteps. Shit.

"What do we have here?"

Keith curls into himself even more at the sound. After running away from the isolation room the Caretakers-in-charge had forced him into, anyone discovering him could mean death. Of course, they called it a 'newly-established clan' instead of isolation, but even himself at ten could see their intention.

He keeps quiet.

"A boy, sir."

"Is he ours?"

"I'll check."

No, Keith thinks. Don't find me.

A boy peeks over the bin. He's not that much older than Keith, but his arm isn't flesh, Keith realizes with a start. It's metal. "Hello!"

Keith glares at him. "Fuck off."

"He's a fiery one, sir." There's mirth in the boy's words, and Keith finds himself relaxing at the sound.

"Ask his name."

The boy looks at his ankle and crouches down in front of him, as if Keith was a scared stray kitten that would run off at the slightest hint of danger. "What's your name, bud?"

Somehow, he trusts him. "Keith."

"I'm Shiro. We could give you a place to stay and train you, we're Galra like you." The boy says. "And the man over there, he's my mentor. Zarkon."

 

 

-

 

 

There is a distinct kind of weight in their clan that everyone seems to carry, curling their shoulders inward when they walk, alone in the grey corridors with the looming silhouette of their shadow.

Battered, his past self would say.

Resilient, his present self would correct.

He doesn’t dodge the blow towards his face.

"What did I tell you, boy?" his mentor says. The chilly calmness seeps into the corners of the room.

"I must not fail, sir." Keith answers. His breaths come short and quick. He's scared.

"And what did you do?"

"Fail. sir."

"I put Shiro as your slave as a warning." Zarkon rumbles. "He's going to pay for what you have failed to do. And for you- you can stay in one of my cylinders until I decide."

Keith falls to his knees, begging. "Sir." He doesn't want to go back. The cylinders are filled with pure quintessence that burns into him, until he's floating, dazed, and the day never seems to end.

Zarkon doesn't reply. His command is law.

If you're disposable, you die.

 

 

-

 

 

Keith's entire body aches. His teachers are harsh.

"How did you get through training, Shiro?"

"I had a best friend before I came here. You’ll learn to fight for a past."

 

 

-

 

 

Keith feels like he’s trapped between worlds, like a dial caught between two units that wouldn’t turn.

“You didn’t fail like you did, I promise. I wanted you to save her.”

Keith looks at Lance. Somewhere, he can feel himself in pain, but he's blissed out right now. “Haven't seen you in a long time."

“It’s not easy,” Lance says. He sits cross-legged in front of Keith’s bed. “I know, I miss you a lot too.’

Keith bits his lip and looks down, the rawness of being read like a book too foreign. “I miss you so much.” He lays his palm flat on Lance's chest, feeling every rise and fall.

Vulnerability, he decides on the word for it. He likes it. He likes knowing someone trusts him enough to let him learn their every breath.

"Where are you, anyway?"

"Home."

They continue to fire questions at each other until they wind down like a clock running out of time.

Keith reaches out and brushes a hand across the other boy's nose, a lazy movement. "Hey, you."

“Hey, yeah, I-” Lance looks at him. He seems a little distorted, as if someone had taken all the blue out in him and manipulated colours until there was a shade that’s slightly off. “Love you.”

They had a pact, years ago when before. They didn't say goodbye, didn't say love because it meant an ending to a beginning.

Lance had said it to his first Caretaker. He had vanished days later.

Hostage, it had said somewhere in the official report. It didn’t matter in the end. They had found his body days after, battered and bruised to the point of being unrecognisable. The only way they could identify him was by his orange moustache.

It didn’t matter because Keith watched Lance break down and the only thing he could was hold him tight and pray the nightmare would end.

They never said anything about love after that.

“You're not him.”

“Oh, but Keith, sweetheart,” Not-Lance leans in and purrs, his voice ghosting over Keith’s cheek. “Can’t you see I’m a projection of what you want?”

“Leave me alone. You’re not Lance.”

Lance winds their fingers together, filling in all the spaces between them. “You know you want me like this.”

“Get. Out.” Keith lets the desperation take over. He jerks away and closes his eyes, thrusting his palms up towards Lance’s face. _Away_.

When he opens his eyes, his heart is beating too quick, a constant drum that makes his breath catch in his throat.

There’s nothing left but silence. Keith’s alone, burning in pure quintessence.

 

 

-

 

 

"Please," Lance sounds panicked. "Wake up. I'm coming for you."

Keith opens his eyes. The pure quintessence blinds him.

He slips back into unconsciousness. Welcomes it, in fact.

"Keith, I'm losing y-"

 

 

-

 

 

They're nine.

"Hey, Lance?"

"What?"

"If I'm lost, would you find me even if it cost you everything?"

 

**Author's Note:**

> hey ssuppositiouss i love you a lot and i might be dying a little as i type this,,,, but yeah i hope you enjoyed this?? and im sorry it's much later than i planned (also i still don't know how to type your username i cheated and copied it)


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